Ken Burns Screens Central Park Five

Ken Burns will be on campus to screen his new film The Central Park Five.

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park. They spent between six and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed that he alone had committed the crime, resulting in their convictions being overturned.

Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, The Central Park Five tells the story of that horrific crime, the rush to judgment by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories, an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.